LightningRods mid drive, givitago's build

don't quite sneak up on people quite as easily with this kit due to the whine of the motor which maybe is a good thing as it allows me to pass when people know I'm there.

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I thought the LR kit was supposed to be quiet and that was the main advantage over the cyclone type mid drive kits ? Efficency of belt drive reduction won't be as good as a planetary gear reduction but i thought it was supposed to be very quiet instead ?

Where does the noise come from ? Motor/belts is something rubbing? You are only running 44v and hence only 42km/h top speed as well , i think the noise gets a lot worse the higher the voltage and rpm you run it so i wounder how loud it will be at higher voltages ?

Whatever noise there is comes from the motor itself. The belt drive is virtually silent. Most electric motors make a humming or whirring sound when they run.

The motor is the noisy bit for the most part but noise is relative. My Mac was noisy compared to a DD, this kit is louder than the Mac, but it has got to be a lot quieter than a chain primary. My Mac was an older one with a solid magnet shell so it was the quieter type but it probably didn't shed heat as well. The 219 chain is running slowly enough I don't think it adds much noise. The freewheel in the jack shaft is a bit noisy when the motor isn't running - that feature proposed for the CA to add a nominal amount of power when not stopped would be a nice for this kit to keep from having the freewheel noise. Not sure if I swapped out the existing DNP for an ACS crossfire or white industries one, whether that would make it any quieter. At speed, the motor is noiser than my tires. I guess it is a high RPM motor that has an RC type sound. The youtube video I posted highlights it. Perhaps a sine wave controller would quiet it some. I'll be interesting to see if anyone gets an Adaptto controller going with this kit. In any case, the volume is acceptable for me, particularly in light of how much better it is on the trail.

LightningRods said:

Awesome! I'm thrilled to see the first customers getting their bikes out on the roads and trails!

Your previous "sluggish response" comment didn't make sense to me at the time. I'm glad that you found the cause of it. The fact that you are using the middle power setting on the 3 way switch suggests that's it's responsive now.

The front chainrings may need some adjustment in terms of the spacing between the 44 or 48 tooth large chainwheel and the small 32 tooth. I install them with 4 washer spacers between them. If you have a more cogs on the rear cassette you may need to remove a washer spacer to bring the chainwheels closer together. If your shifter overshoots the outside chainwheel and derails you need more separation. If your shifter stuffs the chain between the chainwheels you probably need less separation between the chainwheels.

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Thanks for the tips Mike. I think the spacing works well for the 7 speed I have. I just didn't have the stops set correctly - once I did that it worked fine. I did get some ghost shifting on the rear cassette on the smaller rings at higher speeds on a bumpy dirt road. My derailleur is old so maybe it has got sloppy. I'm considering taking another link out of the chain, but I have a cheap Mega-range 7 speed cassette. I guess I might need to downshift the front to use the 34T rear cog.

I really didn't think I would use the small chainring in the front, but it is nice to have for some climbing I did today. The thing is like a tractor!

givitago said:

I really didn't think I would use the small chainring in the front, but it is nice to have for some climbing I did today. The thing is like a tractor!

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Torque multiplication. "Give me a long enough lever and a place to stand, and I can move the world."

At speed, the motor is noiser than my tires. I guess it is a high RPM motor that has an RC type sound. The youtube video I posted highlights it.

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ok i watched the video and i can here what you talk about, so the belt drive is quiet but the motor is noisy, thats a bummer as it cancels out some of the benefits of belt drive quietness. Can you put a DBA meter( Their is free android mobile phone apps that do it ) next it from a certain distance say 1m away on the ground, so we can see how loud it is ?

Its weird it shouldnt be as noisy as an RC motor as the Kv is very low ~70 kv/rpm isnt it? and rc motors are mostly above 150kv , So its not doing astronomical RPM' at 48v but still noisy. Maybe its because of the size of the motor amplifying the noise or the controller you use ? Would sensorless or sinewave make it quieter ?

jk1 said:

Can you put a DBA meter( Their is free android mobile phone apps that do it ) next it from a certain distance say 1m away on the ground, so we can see how loud it is ?

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I can but it'll have to wait a week or so as I'm going out of town for a bit.

It seems like any recording of e-bike sounds I have heard over the years are just plain horrible. The bike in motion with an on board camera is even worse with the sounds of a 20 to 30 mph breeze into the mix. I wonder if the best way to get an impression of the actual sound of this kit and how loud it is compared to other motors is to actually have a side by side ride by with say a DD hub, and or a mac in the wheel etc and the LR kit. At least with this kind of comparison even if the recording is crap you can get a feel for how the LR Kit compares to something you are familiar with.

I hope to ride with Givitago sometime in the future as he is not too far from me in location. If that happens I will be riding my mac 10t and we maybe we could do a quick video of the two bikes doing a ride by a video camera on a tripod for sound comparisons.

Without a comparison to something you are familiar with regarding sound, I think a simple user review like " At 30 mph with mountain bike tires I can not hear the motor just the wind." or some thing like this means more than a recording on a cheap recorder. ......just my opinion however.

Yeah agree their is too many variable when listening to a recording, hence why i think a DbA measurment App on the mobile phone is a good idea and stationary test with the back wheel in the air, is better then a moving road test. Also to make it a good test i think the best thing would be to compare 2 bikes with the same test setup on the same day like you guys are thinking.

Say in someones quiet garage would be ideal. Sit the phone on the ground faceing screen upwards, 1 meter away from the centre of the cranks on the bike chain side and then go through throttle in say top gear, then go low and high rpm with back wheel off the ground and find the peak Dba at any rpm. Then repeat the same test for the DD hub or MAC bike or BBS02. That will give the closest real world comparision with no background noise and anyone could compare their bikes to this Dba measurement at 1M away, this could be useful for people trouble shooting to know if they have a faulty and noisy motor or gears etc

jk1, I am not so sure about the db readings as far as a number really being of any use. A high pitched whine giving a certain db reading and a lower pitched db reading with the same number may not really give someone a feel for if the noise of your motor following you around day after day is going to bother you or not.

Its interesting as I ride with a buddy that has the exact set up as mine as far as controller and motor and battery. With him riding behind me I can not hear him at all in single track 5 mph riding up a hill. With him in front of me I can hear him but barely. For me riding alone at slow speeds the sound of my chain when pedalling is creating more noise than the little mac 10t in the wheel. Things like this mean more to me than some db number but just my opinion. A super high pitched whine is going to get on my nerves if its following me around but not maybe for everyone.

I say compare the sound of your rig to things you can relate to, like the sound of the wind at 20mph or the sound of the wind at 30mph, can I hear the motor or chain noise over the sound of the wind and tires at a certain speed.

not DB , DbA is ideal as it is weighted to human hearing to account for higher frequencies sounding louder.

from wikipedia "A-weighting is the most commonly used of a family of curves defined in the International standard IEC 61672:2003 and various national standards relating to the measurement of sound pressure level. A-weighting is applied to instrument-measured sound levels in effort to account for the relative loudness perceived by the human ear, as the ear is less sensitive to low audio frequencies."

Any vids with lrs kit?

Looking foward to more vids

Here is a video of yesterday's ride up Mt Fromme. Sorry for the misaligned gopro camera and shaky video. Enough to make me feel ill watching it. For some reason, I couldn't get the preview mode to work on my phone.


23km and about 10ahs with lots of uphill. Lots of fun. The bike really doesn't seem very loud in the video.

[youtube]B0020ILNDRo[/youtube]

Whoa, Hey givitago, I live on 21st. right off rufus where you took your video. I walk by your house all the time.... small world. I'm building dhcomp with Mikes LR kit as well.

damon said:

Whoa, Hey givitago, I live on 21st. right off rufus where you took your video. I walk by your house all the time.... small world. I'm building dhcomp with Mikes LR kit as well.

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Wtf? And you guys have never met or seen each other riding?

hah hah, nope. I just moved to the neighborhood though. and I've never actually been out on the bike yet. I'm switching over from motorcycles...

Nice vid. Yours definitely sounds quieter than mine. Maybe when my motor is fixed it will sound different. Can I ask what throttle grip you are using?

damon said:

I live on 21st. right off rufus where you took your video. I walk by your house all the time.... small world. I'm building dhcomp with Mikes LR kit as well.

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Yeh, that is a small world - 20 or so orders for this kit worldwide and two on the same block! We might have met at the 21st street block party.

We should go for a ride when you get your kit together. Feel free to come by and check it out too if you like.

I've never seen anyone else on an e-bike on the trails. But I bet that won't be the case for too much longer.

jdevo2004 said:

Yours definitely sounds quieter than mine. Maybe when my motor is fixed it will sound different. Can I ask what throttle grip you are using?

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I bet yours was noiser with 100v and a rubbing magnet! The motor seems a lot noiser than it is on the video but it is reasonable IMO. The clicks of the shifter seem really loud which I have never really noticed riding. Go figure.

I'm using a Magura throttle with a single small inline resister. I chopped the end off so it is a half twist to be able to keep clamp on grips. Too many broken cheap throttles with broken plastic stuck in the open throttle position made me take the plunge. CA V3 mapping combined with an ebrake switch works well for me.

Excellent video,looks gnarly.the drive sounds great,the shifting sounds positive and true.

Took my GPS Analogger along for my ride yesterday up a trail called Ned's on Mt Seymour.

Here is the trip on EBike CA's trip analyzer for anyone who is interested in some stats from the kit:

http://www.ebikes.ca/tools/trip-analyzer.html?trip=GWgbxq

Thank you for posting some actual stats on this kit. Hope to see more. After reviewing just elevation and speed plots, it appears one variable is inaccurate; I suspect elevation unless you are riding a submarine at -95m deep. Assuming the terrain has descents of some reasonable grade, the speed seems low as well. Just coasting down grades (260m to -77m) should net greater speed than shown.

The GPS Analogger takes the CA feed plus the location data from the GPS. It appears to capture and use elevation as well. GPS elevation is notoriously inaccurate. What I do is use GPS file solely for location (ground/plane speed ok). Then grab and overlay the elevation from a tool that uses USGS DEM data as this is far more accurate.

Maybe you can offer a short commentary here about the trip.

Yes, the elevation is a tad inaccurate - there was no snorkel involved on this trip. Found an elevation service and it says the start was 133 m and the peak was 428 meters with lots of ups and downs in between. Perhaps when I get some time, I will write a powershell script to use this service to update the altitude in the $GPGGA records.

The first few kms of this trip was a rode ride then on to a gravel road after I passed over the rivers, then onto a fairly hilly cross country trail with a number of things like log rides, balance obstacles, hairpin turns and the like. Pretty exhausting without a motor, at least for me. Anyway, it doesn't lend itself to high speed. This kit is great for that as it can go slow with enough torque to tackle the stunts. Anyway, after a bit of this the trail veers left and goes up a trail called Old Buck which used to cook my motor as it is quite steep for quite a long way. THis takes you to the top of the hill at about 430M. Then down Ned's which is pretty washed out, rocky trail. It is reasonably steep with lots of smallish 2 footer drops. 20 kph or so is a pace I'm pretty compfortable with, but even with that, it was enough to cause my lipo buzzers to start their annoying beeping because the conections get jostled - at least I think it is the connections.

Anyhow, the slow speeds are accurate I think, but they are slow because of the type of trails these are. Full charge, the kit with my 9fet 44s controller goes 48 kph at 1500W. Road acceleration is still disappointing for me - I may try upping my phase amps and battery amps to 40/100 or so as I saw some post somewhere that those might be reasonable for 9fet em3ev controller. I'd be interested if anyone has the defaults for EM3Evs controllers before I go ahead and mess it up! Or maybe I will just buy one from Lyen that has been tuned for this motor.

my 9fet with modded board traces (braided wire) and a second shunt (not needed imho) and 3077 fets takes 45/100 w/o issues.

So I tried upping the phase amps on my controller. It did increase acceleration slightly but still did not rival the Mac. I think I can accept that this kit seems more like a tractor than a dragster. The downside was a large decrease in range so I put it back to around 30/75 amps battery/phase.

I've been beset by other issues on the bike unfortunately. My CA now cuts out the throttle under harder acceleration. The spedometer starts showing 0 kph or jumps to hundreds of KPH. I wonder if it was the reprogramming of the controller. I didn't disconnect it when I reprogrammed.

I also snapped my 2001 vanilla coil spring. I was lucky that the local suspension shop had an old one available. I learned that they don't make such puny springs anymore and even air shocks will be bigger. If the shock finally gives it up, I won't be able to replace it with anything else that would still give enough room for my battery box. Seems to be lots of reasons why these older DH frames make for good conversion candidates.

I replaced my derailleur with a shimano SLX from Chain Reaction Cycles. Horray, no duty! I'm hoping it will reduce the chain skipping issues I've had from my very old XT derailleur that was cracked. Hope the SLX derailleur is as good as those brakes I got.

Regarding the issues with the 219 chain becoming loose because the kit twists, I took the advice from the main thread and moved the spacer on the down tube bracket to the other side. I also installed a turnbuckle anchored to a cable that will resist any twisting. It hooks into the jackshaft slot an crosses the kit and is anchored to a cable wrapped around the frame. I can also use it to tighten the chain by twisting the kit in the opposite direction. I noticed the same bending of the downtube bracket that I saw in photos on the main thread.

I'm hoping I can get the CA issue resolved soon so I can get riding again!